Garriott attacks Tabula Rasa beta

We invited too many testers when the MMO was still broken, says General British

Richard Garriott has attacked the beta test of his sci-fi MMO Tabula Rasa, saying that game has been hurt by inviting too many testers.

Speaking about marketing in relation to the game, Garriott said, "I actually think the biggest mistake was made not by the marketing department, but by the development team. We invited too many people into the beta when the game was still too broken."

"We burned out some quantity of our beta-testers when the game wasn't yet fun," he added. "As we've begun to sell the game, the people who hadn't participated in the beta became our fast early-adopters."

Garriott went on to say that the team has had to go back to beta testers and attempt to convince them that the MMO is "fixed" now and they should come and try the game again.

"We've had to go out and develop free programs to invite those people back for free before they go buy it. So the beta process, which we used to think of as a QA process, is really a marketing process", he said.

Tabula Rasa hasn't reviewed too badly, GameRankings.com listing scores at an average of 79 percent. You can read a review here.